Free Republic

President-elect Joe Biden announced Tuesday he was nominating Samantha Power, a former Obama administration official and key unmasker of Trump campaign staffers, to a top position in his incoming administration. “Ambassador Samantha Power is a world-renowned voice of conscience and moral clarity — challenging and rallying the international community to stand up for the dignity and humanity of all people,” Biden said in a statement. “As USAID Administrator, she’ll be a powerful force for principled American engagement.”

Retired Admiral William McRaven has published an op-ed in Friday’s New York Times titled, “Our Republic Is Under Attack From the President,” urging that Trump be removed from office — “the sooner, the better.” McRaven’s op-ed gives a military imprimatur to what President Donald Trump has already likened to a “coup,” as Democrats attempt to impeach him with barely a year to go before the next presidential election. The admiral, well-respected for his role in overseeing the operation to kill Al Qaeda terrorist Osama bin Laden in 2011, argues that senior military leaders have lost confidence in the president and...

There are moments within investigative research when your jaw can stand agape as you recognize the scope of what you are reading or hearing. A brutally down-played audio of Secretary John Kerry is just such an occasion.(snip) This evidence within this single story would/should forever remove any credibility toward the U.S. foreign policy under President Obama. It also destroys the credibility of a large number of well known republicans. What the recording reveals is substantive: ♦ First, only regime change, the removal of Bashir Assad, in Syria was the goal for President Obama. This is admitted and outlined by Secretary...

That’s … a lotta unmasking. The fact that Samantha Power is at the heart of the “unmasking” investigation in the House barely qualifies as news at this point, as her name has been floating around in connection with it for months. In fact, Trey Gowdy quizzed John Brennan about a mysterious ambassador and her strange unmasking requests at a House hearing all the way back on May 23. By mid-July the Free Beacon’s sources had identified her as a “central figure” in the probe. Note this quote from that piece: “Unmasking is not a regular occurrence—absolutely not a weekly...

Word is going around diplomatic circles that the Obama administration is planning a November surprise for Israel. Here’s what is said to be going on: The Paris peace conference last Friday, to which Israel and the Palestinians were not even invited, will end up exerting enormous pressure on Israel to create a Palestinian state. This renewed pressure will come despite evidence that a Palestinian state in the West Bank will quickly be dominated by genocidal Hamas, which is a threat to Israel and a disaster for the Palestinians. This will lead, in all likelihood, to a United Nations Security Council...

Behind the rise of ISIS, the Libyan Civil War, the unrest in Egypt, Yemen and across the region may be a single classified document.That document is Presidential Study Directive 11.You can download Presidential Study Directive 10 on “Preventing Mass Atrocities” from the White House website, but as of yet no one has been able to properly pry number 11 out of Obama Inc.Presidential Study Directive 10, in which Obama asked for non-military options for stopping genocide, proved to be a miserable failure. The Atrocities Prevention Board’s only use was as a fig leaf for a policy that had caused the...

WASHINGTON — Americans following this year's presidential campaign would never know it from mainstream media coverage, but the commander in chief we hired four years ago has set the United States on a course for unilateral disarmament. The following people hope you won't notice until after Nov. 6: Vladimir Putin, Liang Guanglie, Kim Jong-un, Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Sayyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei, Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, A.Q. Khan and of course, Barack Obama. The 10 individuals above share a common fascination: nuclear weapons. Vladimir Putin, Russia's modern czar; Liang Guanglie, minister of national defense for...

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday blamed the migrant crisis in Europe on the United States for imposing its own standards on countries in the Middle East and Africa while failing to understand their culture and traditions. In the far eastern Russian city of Vladivostok, Putin told the media that it was an “absolutely expected crisis.” “We in Russia, and your humble servant, said several years ago that there would be massive problems if our so-called Western partners carry out what I have always called an ‘incorrect’ foreign policy, especially in the regions of the Muslim world, in the Middle...

Crimea's [Head Of Republic] But Mr Aksyonov denied that Russia had done anything wrong. Sergei Aksyonov said the annexation of the peninsula by Russia one year ago had been a "democratic act". "I can tell you that no-one took anything," he told the BBC's John Simpson. "That was the choice of the Crimeans. Nothing could happen without the support of the local population which is why this was not an act of aggression, but a real democratic act. "This is the main mistake and misunderstanding of Western leaders. People are misinformed by the media which is failing to give an...

President Barack Obama is sending National Security Advisor Susan Rice and UN Ambassador Samantha Power–widely seen as among the most anti-Israel members of his administration–to address a prominent pro-Israel gathering next week. The move is described by the Associated Press as an effort to mend fences after the administration had withheld speakers from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference. In reality, it is a further slap in the face. Rice caused an uproar earlier this week when she told interviewer Charlie Rose that the forthcoming speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a special joint session...

People talk a lot about Islamic extremism and ISIS/ISIL (the guys who behead Christians, among others), but what about Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army? "I don't remember people talking about that as much anymore, but that's a Christian militant group," State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Wednesday. She was making the point that terrorism "is not just a threat in one place" -- and it's not just Islamic: "If you look at the Lord's Resistance Army and Kony, Joseph Kony -- I don't remember people talking about that as much anymore, but that's a...

The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power, allowed on NPR this morning that American action in Syria might not be legal:

The chairman of a special House committee created to investigate the 2012 Benghazi tragedy on Monday instructed his staff to review secretly recorded tapes and intelligence reports that detail Hillary Rodham Clinton’s role in advocating and executing the war in Libya, opening the door for a possible expansion of his probe. Rep. Trey Gowdy’s decision to seek a review of the materials, first highlighted in a series of Washington Times stories last week, carries consequences for the 2016 election in which Mrs. Clinton is expected to seek the presidency. It could also move the committee to examine the strained relationship...

His West Point speech and his policy of retreat are characterized by smallness. It is fitting that the day before President Obama gives his grand West Point address defending the wisdom and prudence of his foreign policy, his government should be urging Americans to evacuate Libya. Libya, of course, was once the model Obama intervention — the exquisitely calibrated military engagement wrapped in the rhetorical extravagance of a nationally televised address proclaiming his newest foreign-policy doctrine (they change to fit the latest ad hoc decision): the responsibility to protect, or R2P. (snip) For the same reason, perhaps, that the Afghan...

President Obama's pick to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is facing under-the-radar opposition that could flare during Wednesday's confirmation hearing. While hawkish senators like Republican John McCain have come out in support of Samantha Power, more than four-dozen former military leaders,national security officials and conservative political groups are now asking senators to reject Power’s nomination. … Power,a former White House adviser and longtime Obama friend, once likened U.S. foreign policies to those of the Nazis. … Retired Lt. Gen. William G. 'Jerry' Boykin,who is behind a movement to block Power's confirmation,agrees. “We should be proud to...

Samantha Power has been a notorious critic of Israel for years and that, naturally, makes her well-qualified under President Obama's criteria to serve in such a crucial post. She will be welcomed with open arms at the United Nations. We at American Thinker have been warning about her influence with Barack Obama since 2008 (see Samantha Power and Obama's Foreign Policy Team). But her bit of nastiness seems to be tinged with a bit of anti-Semitism as well. When concerns arose in 2008 regarding Barack Obama and his views towards Israel it generated wrath from Ms. Power, who was a...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A White House official says President Barack Obama will name former aide Samantha Power as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Power will replace Susan Rice, who will take over as Obama's national security adviser. The official says Obama will announce both appointments from the White House Wednesday afternoon. Power is a longtime Obama adviser who worked on his 2008 presidential campaign and ran the human rights office in the White House.

Well, that didn't take long. A "senior Obama administration official" is breaking ranks to call out his boss in Time magazine about Libya.In an article published online Sunday night, Time writer Massimo Calabresi buries the lede by holding the bombshell quotes until the fourth paragraph, preferring to write about himself the first three.The quotes have the official all but calling Obama a liar over his stated reasons for going to war in Libya. The article also has the official saying Obama is knowingly taking a "huge gamble" because al Qaeda has cells in Libya that could benefit from the the...

What Is Samantha Power Thinking?The charismatic Obama adviser believes that stopping "genocide" is the United States' top foreign-policy priority. On March 18, President Obama explained his decision to mobilize the United States military for international intervention in Libya. “Left unchecked,” he said, “we have every reason to believe that Qaddafi would commit atrocities against his people. Many thousands could die. A humanitarian crisis would ensue. The entire region could be destabilized, endangering many of our allies and partners.” (As if it hasn’t been already?) That last sentence was a Realpolitik, national-interest justification for the U.S. intervention. But it rang hollow....

The continued stalemate in Libya is not good news for Samantha Power widely seen as one of the architects of the Libyan intervention. Power, who works with the National Security Council, has been touted as the next secretary of State if Obama is re-elected but if Libya continues to be a stalemate it will not help her case... But the original script went wrong from there with rebels advancing, then retreating like a bad Charlie Chaplin scene before the current stalemate. Stalemate is not good in that corner of the world, and a leaderless state, like Somalia can soon become...